The Farmer's Tears: Sowing Through Scarcity and Peril

Spurgeon observed peasants sowing seed not merely with tears, but in conditions that would wring tears from any soul. During seasons of great scarcity, poor farmers parted with every precious measure of seed—like taking bread from their children's mouths. The distress ran so deep that governments were compelled to furnish seed, or cultivation would cease entirely. Ibrahim Pasha did this more than once in Spurgeon's lifetime, echoing the example of Joseph in Egypt after the seven-year famine.

But the farmer's tears flowed from more than hunger. The arable lands lay distant from villages—six or eight miles distant in places like the 'Ard Huleh—positioned dangerously near the lawless desert border. When civil order weakened, farmers could not sow these fields except at mortal risk. They traveled in large armed companies, weapons ready to exchange for ploughshares at a moment's warning. Yet despite this vigilance, sad and fatal calamities overtook these sowers.

Add to this the stubborn soil itself—rocky, impenetrable, choked with sharp thorns requiring painful labor to break and clear. With feeble oxen and insignificant ploughs, farmers subdued the earth through cold, rain, fear, danger, poverty, and want. They cast their precious seed into hostile ground. This is the man of whom the Psalmist speaks: laboring in anguish, yet trusting Elohim's promised harvest.